Keeping the public out of a meeting next week that could change the direction of development at Denver International Airport — the state’s largest economic driver — would break Colorado open-meetings law, experts said Thursday.

Adams County would prefer that the meeting among three elected officials, the mayor of Denver and two of his appointed representatives be conducted behind closed doors.

Adams County attorney Jen Wascak said the Airport Consultation Committee is exempt from state Sunshine Laws because its members come from different governments and have no “governmental decision making function.”

Thomas Kelley, a lawyer for the Colorado Press Association and The Denver Post, says, “Adams County’s position is incorrect on all points.”

He says rulemaking authority or not, the committee was formally convened and so it must follow open-meetings laws. He cited a 1976 Colorado Court of Appeals decision that ruled groups with members from multiple government agencies were considered a “committee of political subdivision,” also subject to the laws.

The consultation committee, established as part of the 1988 intergovernmental agreement that allowed Denver to annex the Adams County land for DIA, was reconvened this year to restart conversations about Airport City, a plan floated by Denver to develop business clusters inside the airport’s bounds.

Denver officials said they would prefer to have the meeting open but decided to respect Adams County’s wish to close it.

Colorado Ethics Watch lawyer Peg Perl said the language used to create the group in the 1988 document is vague but likely wouldn’t exclude it from complying with open-meetings laws.

“At first blush, even if this is an ‘advisory’ committee, it does appear to be formally constituted in this agreement and could be seen as part of the decision-making process,” Perl said. “We think they should err on the side of transparency and make the meetings public, especially since the designated officials are all county elected officials or mayors.”

Yesenia Robles was a breaking news reporter for The Denver Post, working with the organization from 2010-2016. She covered education, crime and courts, and the northern suburbs. Raised in Denver, she graduated from the University of Colorado Boulder and is a native Spanish speaker.

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